About Me

Originally a geologist by training, I now work as a museum professional. My passion is old photographs, the photographers who took them, the equipment and technologies they used, the people and scenes in the photos, and the stories behind them.

Wednesday, 8 July 2009

Having just taken delivery of some hay for our two hungry cows, to tide them through this especially cool winter and corresponding period of poor grass growth, today's submission for the footnoteMaven's 15th Edition of the Smile for the Camera Carnival, "They worked hard for the family," (hosted on Shades of the Departed) is an appropriate choice.

The professions of our ancestors are almost as interesting as the people themselves. Some of our ancestors worked very hard; they took in laundry, worked the land, raised many children, or went to school and became professionals. Photographs of them working are called occupational photographs and are rather hard to find.

When I started this blog just over two years ago, I wrote in my introductory article that I wanted to include examples of "Victorian photos showing aspects of ordinary daily life." Unfortunately, as fM states, such photos are not very common, and I don't come across many. In my own family collection, for example, I have no occupational photographs prior to the Great War, apart from those which show people undergoing military training.

This photograph of a magnificently moustachioed man gathering hay is from an album that I purchased on eBay a few years ago. Although the album contains a dedication to its owner from one Henry Mitchell at Allestree in Derbyshire, dated 25 August 1894, none of the photographs in the album had captions or were annotated in anyway. My primary interest in the album was that most of the studio portraits within it were from Derby studios, and many of them have been featured on my web site devoted to Derbyshire Photographers & Photographic Studios.

The album is typical of the kind produced in the 1880s and early 1890s. It has a padded leather cover embossed with a stylised floral design, probably in the art nouveau style, and ten thick cardboard leaves with spaces for eight cabinet cards and 48 cartes de visite. Only two of the CDV slots are missing photographs, although some ofthem are occupied by other formats of photo, trimmed to fit. Four of the pages have coloured floral designs. The metal clasp is unfortunately broken, and several of the paper photo sleeves are torn, but this does not detract too much from its overall appearance, as can be seen from the image above.

In February last year I wrote an article about how a visitor to my Derbyshire Photographers web site had come across an image of a cabinet card of her great-grandparents Henry & Ann Jane Statham in the profile of photographer W.N. Statham, identical to one hanging in her home. That photograph, together with a carte de visite of daughters Gertrude and Lilian, and a cabinet card of sons Isaac and Henry, came from this Allestree album.

Of the 54 photographs in the album, 32 are clearly marked as having been taken at Derbyshire studios, including Matlock Bridge, Matlock Bath, Derby, Chesterfield and Shirebrook, while a further five were taken at Nottingham, Leicester and Loughborough. As 86% of the marked portraits were from Derbyshire, it seems likely that at a good proportion of the remaining unmarked photographs were also taken in Derbyshire.

Unfortunately we have yet to identify any other of the many people depicted in it, or even the "Henry Mitchell" who wrote the dedication in the front of the album. As a result we have few clues to the identity of the haymaker or the location of the field in which the hay is being gathered. It is possible that at some time in the future a reader might recognise the stone walls, field and row of houses in the image above. I hope it will happen but, to be honest, I think that is a long shot. For the moment we will have to enjoy the photograph for what it is, a portrait of a hard working man. Having shifted the occasional bale of two of hay myself, I know it is very hard work.

Tuesday, 7 July 2009

I purchased this carte de visite a couple of years ago on eBay mainly because I thought it was an unusually striking portrait. However, the reverse of the card mount revealed a story which proved to be as intriguing as the subjects.

The portrait is of a young woman, perhaps in her mid- to late twenties or early thirties, with a young child in her lap. What makes it unusual, at least to me, is that the child appears to be asleep. I think there will be quite a few readers who will assert that she is dead and that this is a post-mortem portrait, but I don't think so. The woman is facing straight into the camera with a very direct look, and it's not exactly a happy look, but I don't think it's a sad one either. The child looks asleep, with slightly tousled hair, and may be wearing a christening gown. I think the photographer has merely taken advantage of the opportunity. In other words, the child being asleep would enable him obtain a sharp portrait without the usual fidgeting and impatience.

The style of the woman's clothes, her hair, the studio setting and the card mount all suggest to me a date of the mid- to late 1860s. The gigot or leg-of-mutton sleeve, narrow at the shoulder, and flaring from just below the shoulder to become fullest at the mid-forearm, and then tapering rapidly down to become closed at the wrists was common in the early to mid-1860s, as was the full, dome-shaped striped crinoline skirt. The ribbons around her neck are in a style which became fashionable around 1866. Her hair is centrally parted and tied back above her ears, which also became fashionable only in the second half of the 1860s. The straight-on, full face seated pose is of a style which was more common in the 1850s - the ambrotype era - but would perhaps have been employed in this case in preference to a standing profile, or three-quarter view because of the necessity to include of the sleeping child. The studio background is simple, with a nicely painted backdrop showing a plain wall with low skirting board, a window with open shutters, and a portion of a rural scene. Whatever studio furniture is being used, it is hidden by the woman's boddice and skirts.

The card mount is made from relatively thin card with square corners, indicating a date of prior to c. 1874. The design on the reverse is of a style which was fairly common in the late 1860s and early 1870s. A device or emblem - in this case, rather unusually a frying pan - is enveloped by text in a single font style, but three different font sizes, and the whole is surrounded with a simple double line frame with scalloped corners. The frames are more commonly seen in the 1870s, but are not too rare in the late 1860s to preclude this example dating from that period.

I have seen many different emblems used as the centrepiece in early card mount designs, from the standard monograms, coats of arms, artist's palettes and early box cameras to cherubs, Freemason's insignia and other heraldic devices. However, I have never before encountered a frying pan. It suggested to me that the practitioner may have been taking portraits merely as a sideline, and provided a clue to the photographer's primary occupation, but it was not an easy one to research.

Initially, a simple Google search for the string "Family Fry Pan" and the word "Leicester" revealed an 1866 book entitled The History of Signboards from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (by Jacob Larwood & John Camden Hotten) with the following (p. 396):

The Frying Pan is still a constant ironmonger's sign - thus in Highcross Street, Leicester, there is a gigantic gilt specimen with the inscription "the Family Fry Pan." There are trades tokens of "John Vere, at ye Frying Pan in Islington, Mealman," which considered in connexion with pancakes, one can understand; but it certainly looks out of place at the door of Samuel Wadsell, bookseller at the Golden Frying Pan, in Leadenhall Street, 1680.

Deducing the identity of J.Bramley was not quite so easy. Although there was a well known firm of ironmongers by the name of Bramley operating in Leicester during the 1870s and 1880s, the name of the proprietor was William Forrester Bramley and his premises were in Granby Street. He did have a son John Simpson Bramley who was listed as an ironmonger's assistant in 1871, but he appears not to have been the photographer in question.

The key to the story actually lies in the premises listed on the reverse of the card mount. From an examination of street listings in trade directories of the 1860s to 1880s, the Family Fry Pan Studio appears to have been located on the south-east corner of High Cross and High Streets, as shown in the GoogleMaps view above. In the early 1860s premises at this address were occupied by one William Banton, who operated an eating house and refreshment rooms (1861-1862) and later, presumably after he had obtained a licence, a beerhouse and boarding house. However by 1864 the shop had been taken over by Mary Parker, widow of a Leicester hosier, Thomas Parker. She operated as a glass, china, earthenware, hardware & ironware dealer and wholesale haberdasher, and from around 1870 her sister and brother-in-law Elizabeth and Job Bramley joined her. A trade directory of that year lists the business as Parker & Bramley, hardware dealers and haberdashers and shows Job Bramley as the manager, although the census a years later describes him as "shopman to [a] haberdasher."

Job Bramley was born c. 1815-1816 at Basford, probably a son of a woodman William Bramley. He was a tailor in his twenties and, after marrying Elizabeth Butt at Nottingham in 1840, lived in Willoughby-on-the-Woulds, Sneinton and Stapleford (Nottinghamshire) before settling in Derby between 1845 and 1851. By 1861 he also operated a druggist's shop at 20 Derby Road. They joined Elizabeth's sister Mary in Leicester at some stage in the late 1860s, although the exact date is unknown. In 1877 he was listed as a manager, and a year later as a haberdasher & general dealer, so perhaps the partnership had been dissolved by then.

By April 1881 Job and Elizabeth Bramley had moved to Halifax, Yorkshire, where he described himself as a general dealer, and the premises at 106 High Street, Leicester had been taken over by Alfred James Garner. By 1891 the proprietor of the business, still known as The Family Frypan, was William Hallam. Further references to The Family Frypan have been found for the first decade of the 20th Century. Job Bramley died at Halifax in 1892, aged 75.

The most likely date for the portrait is probably c. 1867-1870. Bernard and Pauline Heathcote's excellent index to Leicester photographers doesn't mention either Job Bramley or the Family Frypan Studio, and I think this suggests that it must have only been operating for a brief period of time. This seems a pity to me, because I think Bramley had a good eye for portrait photography, and he might have done well. However, he would have been up against considerable competition, such as the well established firm of .John Burton & Sons and others.

References

Larwood, Jacob & Hotten, John Camden (1866) The History of Signboards from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, (12th impression, 1908, Chatto & Windus, London, courtesy of BiblioBazaar and GoogleBooks)